Novell Teaming: Going Mobile

When the Novell Teaming group sat down and discussed ideas to improve Teaming for the 2.1 release, they knew that a major goal was to combine the power of Teaming with the mobility of a hand-held device. The new Teaming user interface represents the achievement of that goal.

Accessing Teaming with a Web-enabled phone gives users secure access to the power of Teaming from virtually anywhere in the world. Although this new functionality is designed for common mobile devices such as Blackberries and iPhones, the Teaming mobile user interface (UI) works with any smart phone or mobile device that has browser capabilities.

The Teaming mobile UI provides a specialized view of Teaming that allows users to efficiently utilize Teaming’s most powerful features when on the go. To use the mobile UI, simply access Teaming from your mobile device’s web browser. Teaming detects that you are using a mobile device and automatically launches the mobile interface.

Included Features

Home Page

When using Teaming with the mobile UI, you will notice a simplified, user-friendly home page. The home page includes your picture (if available), personal information, and quick links to the most commonly used areas and features in Teaming. You can click the Home button from anywhere within the mobile UI to return to this page.

My Workspace

Links you to your Personal Workspace. We will go into greater detail about your this feature later in our article.

My Favorites

Displays all the workspaces and folders that you have marked as favorite places in Teaming.

My Teams

Allows you to view all of the teams that you are a member of, and to easily move from one team workspace to another.

What’s New

Just like in the full interface, the What’s New feature shows you updates on the activity of the various projects, teams or tracked places in one, simple view. New in this release is the ability to see the latest micro-blogs of the people you are following.

Navigation Link

The navigation link, or tree-view button, shows you where you are within the Teaming hierarchy, so you can quickly navigate within Teaming.

Micro-Blog Menu

The Micro-Blog menu lets you easily update your micro-blog. People in your organization can view your Micro- Blog updates, and you view yours as well. This lets you easily keep track of what is going on in your business.

Actions Menu

The Actions menu provides a quick list of options that apply to the entry, folder, or workspace that you are currently viewing. This includes the ability to view new, unread, and recently visited folders. The Actions menu also includes a tracking option that allows you to start or stop tracking folders, workspaces, and other users. The Full Teaming View option lets you change to the full Teaming UI incase you need to access functionality not in the mobile UI.

Search

The search feature, as shown to the left, allows you to quickly search for information, places or people. New in the release is the ability to narrow your search by choosing to search within a workspace or folder that you are currently in.

Workspaces and Folders

Just like in the full interface, you can access all the workspaces and folder you have rights to. The same security and access controls are enforced in the Mobile UI as in the full UI. When looking at a workspace, you can see any sub-workspaces and folders within that workspace.

My Workspace

This link takes you to your Personal Workspace, as shown in the image to the left. Here you can easily search or access any sub-workspaces or folders. You will have quick access to your personal information like files, calendar and tasks or anything else you have have in your Personal Workspace.

Upon clicking on a folder, and then on an entry, you will see a screen much like the one shown below:

Add and Edit Entries

The Teaming mobile user interface has the capacity to allow you to create new entries or edit existing entries.

Comment Counter

Located on the far right of every entry in a folder is a number that quickly lets you know how many people have replied to that entry.

Calendar

We’ve just given you an overview of what the new mobile UI looks like and a few of the things you can do with it. You can see that it is user-friendly and combines the power of Teaming with the convenience of your web-enabled mobile device. If you are a current Teaming customer, we think you will love this new capability. If you are not a current Teaming customer, the new mobile UI and other benefits being added to version 2.1 make it an even more powerful and useful team collaboration solution.

The next article will cover the improvements made to the Landing Page editor. Check out our Introductory Article to see all the articles we are doing for the next version of Novell Teaming, version 2.1.

Disclaimer: This content is not supported by Novell. It was contributed by a community member and is published "as is." It seems to have worked for at least one person, and might work for you. But please be sure to test it thoroughly before using it in a production environment.